Every English kid must be forced to read Dickens. Besides, he was 63 when that album came out. Citing a 19th century novel by French surrealist Alfred Jarry is a whole 'nother category and he was only 27 when he did so.
More impressive, it wasn’t just a passing reference for fun. McCartney actually studied Jarry and the school that admired him. People talk about how Ono turned Lennon on to experimental art, but few mention that McCartney was deeply involved in French surrealism.
Would have been nice if that interest turned into serious music after the Beatles instead of his farm-grown twee.
It was just a couple of days ago that this occurred to me: In What We Do in the Shadows, a guy named Guillermo de la Cruz is living with vampires. Cruz = Cross.
When Macca started dating Jane Asher, a young stage actress in a highly educated family, his intellectual world expanded. He’s always been a curious guy. He was into Stockhausen and the like before Lennon.
Had one the other evening. Watching over a friend’s shoulder while they watched Sixth Sense.
Okay, most of the ghosts hovered close to where they died. So in Cole’s apartment we meet, in short order, the mom who slit her wrists and the teenager who offered to show Cole where his dad keeps his gun.
Not two random and unassociated ghosts. Kid kills himself with the gun and his mom can’t cope with it.
In the Futurama episode “Roswell That Ends Well” Professor Farnsworth tries to fit in in 1947 by wearing a zoot suit, and of course ends up sticking out like a sore thumb. But not for the reason I assumed. Thanks to the thread about late 1940s pop culture, I just realized that zoot suits indeed were all the rage in 1947… among young people. The Professor stood out because he was an old man in a zoot suit. To the people of 1947 New Mexico he probably looked like the equivalent of an 80 year old white man trying to dress and talk like a rapper in the present day.
In the original “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” which I watched yesterday for about the 10th time, there is at least one clear shot of holes or slots under Gort’s chin (the horizontal part between chin and neck, terms used advisedly). They don’t seem to show in other similar shots, but it’s hard to tell, as that area is usually in shadow. I assume these are breathing holes for the poor sap (Lock Martin was his name) in the suit. (There are apparently lots of Gort costume snafus in the film as mentioned in IMDB, but this one is not mentioned.)
This link is to a full version that has a lot of idiotic commentary a la MST3K, but not witty. The scene is when Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) is approaching Gort, just after he has melted the plastic in which he was “trapped” (in this copy, it starts at 1:23.33). You may need to be on full screen mode to be able to see them on a computer.
Not just cross - de la Cruz means Of The Cross. Something I didn’t notice right away either, but it becomes such a great joke as Guillermo’s ancestry is uncovered.
I’ve never seen the show, so I don’t know if this is apposite, but one of the saints of the Catholic Church is John of the Cross, a 16th c. mystic and Carmelite monk, who wrote The Dark Night of the Soul. He was a Spaniard, so of course would have been “Juan de la Cruz”.
This thread seems like a good place to stick this. I learned the other day that there is in fact a “Rock and Roll Part 1”. The building I work in has piped in music in the hallways and restrooms, and I heard them playing “Rock and Roll Part 2” and thought “There must be a Part 1, right? Why have I never heard it?” So I looked it up and found that “Rock and Roll” was released as a single with Part 1 (an actual song) on one side and Part 2 (“Hey… Heeyyyy…” etc.) on the other. Apparently Part 1 topped the charts in the UK but it was only Part 2 that made it big in the US.
I only realized yesterday that Don Henley sang the vocals in Hotel California. All these years I thought it was Glen Frey even though I’ve heard Henley singing his own songs for decades and should have recognized the voice.
Dark Side of the Moon. Pink Floyd developed it in public for a year, and I like the versions from late in 1972 best, more than the actual album. Originally “On The Run” was a jam called “The Travel Sequence” and “Great Gig in the Sky” was a different piece of music. Toward the end of 1972, they started playing the music for “Gig” but it didn’t have the vocal on it. “The Travel Sequence” was always improvised, and the music is strikingly different each time. The fun part is that there are bits of classic Pink Floyd that they played during that that never showed up anywhere else.
Speaking of Pink Floyd, at the very end of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” Rick plays “See Emily Play.” I read about that here, and had never heard it before but now I can’t unhear it.
Honorable mention: the expletive in the middle of the Beatles “Hey Jude.” Once you hear it you can never unhear it.
Honorable mention #2: Cindy Wilson told me what the actual words are to the B-52s “There’s a Moon in the Sky.” At the point where Fred Schneider sings “Just ain’t no atmosphere tonight!” the girls underneath are singing “Can’t get no f*ckin’ tune tonight!” This is also one that once you hear it you can never unhear it.
